Leveling shadow, using a lot of mana?

So I'm currently level 58, just got into outlands. I seem to be using an excessive amount of mana, my rotation is put my three dots up and mindflay till 3 shadow orbs then mind blast then, SW: death. And that uses 1/4 my mana which is sitting at 6.7k unbuffed. Am i doing something wrong?

Are you talking about doing dungeons or just killing stuff for quests? o__O If it's the latter, you are doing it wrong. There's no way you should have to go through a full rotation to kill anything that isn't an elite. That'd be where your mana is wasted. You're spending too much for any skills to be of benefit.

Edit: Make sure you have SW: D glyphed so you receive the Spirit Tap buff when you kill something with it. That helps keep your mana at a reasonable level.

I remember low level shadow having really crummy mana problems. Especially before even having SW: Death >< It might not even be worth putting all your dots up at that level. Make sure you have 2/2 in Masochism, SW: Death glyph, and Spirit Tap glyph. I would just pop SW: Death on cd to help on mana.

EDIT: And it's probably not even worth waiting for 3 orbs either to MB (someone can correct me if I'm wrong). Just use it on 1 orb.

Not really. Shadow uses a shitload of mana at lower gear levels. Not a whole lot you can do about that other than get to 85 and get geared. This is because spell costs are determined by base mana (i.e. level) while the amount gained from replenishment scales with max mana (i.e. gear). This will change in MoP btw.

(As for your rotation, I'd recommend going SWP, MF till 1 orb, VT, DP and then MB on cooldown and MF otherwise. But that's just a dps concern, not a mana one.)

e: and of course what someone above me said about nonelites. For those, toss one dot on each of them and run around cackling as you kill everything in your path.

People complaining about arena queues? Oh, my sweet summer child. What do you know of waiting? Waiting is for the dungeon finder, where the average time is 25 minutes and children are born and live and die all before they find a fucking tank.

I remember low level shadow having really crummy mana problems. Especially before even having SWeath >< It might not even be worth putting all your dots up at that level. Make sure you have 2/2 in Masochism, SWeath glyph, and Spirit Tap glyph. I would just pop SW:death on cd to help on mana.

The mana cost of our DOTs is based around the mana returns from Shadowfiend and Dark Archangel at 85. Before that, and before the high amounts of Intellect on raid gear, your DOTs cost an arm and a leg (they still cost an arm and a leg at 85, multidotting is expensive and if you aren't careful and make judicious use of Masochism you will go OOM). While soloing, just don't use your DOTs. They really aren't our most powerful spells. We cast them first because they have high DPET in raids (for the amount of time we spend casting them they are very good) but their actual raw damage and DPS is very low. Most of our raw damage (I believe around 60% at 85 IIRC) comes from Mind Blast and Mind Flay.

Thus, when you are leveling, try concentrating on your shadow orbs, and open with Mind Flay. Yes that is not the raid rotation you see in guides, but you are not raiding. If you do this, you will slow the mob automatically and begin to build orbs. Use a Mind Blast once you get an orb (or the mob is getting into melee range), then finish them off with a Shadow Word: Death. Only use DOTs if you are being attacked by 2 or more mobs at once - DOT one, and use the "nuke" rotation I just outlined on the other. By the time you get done with the first one, the second guy should be nearly dead and you got your mana's worth out of your DOTs. Also, pick up the glyph of Spirit Tap, glyph of Shadow Word: Death is also nice, and the Masochism talent. Once you get Dispersion you can make liberal use of that too. Remember it works while mounted.

e: and of course what someone above me said about nonelites. For those, toss one dot on each of them and run around cackling as you kill everything in your path.

Oh god. Shadow has mana problems when you are in dungeons using your normal rotation but you shouldn't have a problem questing and once you hit 81 its basically....Mind Spike X 3 then Mind Blast and if you need to SW: D. As was stated above, get the SW : D glyph because of that extra mana and if you are Belf then use Arcane Torrent when needed.

The priest I'm leveling is currently lvl 73 and I'm still using this rotation unless I'm fighting elites and it works quite well. I don't ever have to drink to get back my mana. I don't really know what rotation you should use in dungeons though as I only heal those. This rotation works especially nicely when mobs are close to each other as you will probably have one or more orb to open your next fight with.

Shadow uses an obscene amount of mana at any level or gear level (to correct what someone said about it being specific to your situation) - just look at any given raid parse of mana used and mana gained - if you have a shadowpriest in the raid those charts will be completely ruined by their presence - it will be something stuipd like 99% of raid's mana used - shadowpriests - 99% of raids mana gained - shadowpriests. That's why all our abilities are attached to massive mana return cooldowns and mana is still our biggest problem in pvp and was something we had to lose dps to manage in tier 11 (not in tier 12 with the much higher int value and the massive reduction on sfiend cooldown).

The problem goes back to Burning Crusade when 5% of the damage a shadowpriest did was returned to them (and all their group) as mana, this meant that shadowpriests had some minor mana problems at dungeon gear levels, no mana problems by Frozen Shadoweave (which was better than tier 4/5 gear for us) and then infinity mana by tier 6 - to try to make mana a resource for us Blizzard made our spells cost half an infinity of mana per spellcast - but that didn't work because we still had infinity mana.

In WotLK when they took away VT returning infinity mana, rather than reducing our spells from costing infinity mana per cast, they just made every other spell return half our mana bar so we were more like rogues with an energy meter: except we have to drink to regain it out of combat rather than just not attack something for a few seconds.

So welcome to shadow ^^ don't worry though, when you get to max level and walk right into full 378 gear from dragon soul pug raids - your mana problems will be non-existent for the rest of the expansion.

the real question is why are you casting mind flay or mind blast at all while lvling?

just put up vt swp dp and move along to the next mob repeat and keep moving. use dispersion on cd and get more spirit.

Probably because vt swp and dp cost 19% of my full heirloomed 66 priests mana pool. Spirit only give you out of combat mana regen, which if you're multi dotting you're going to be in combat most of the time, and even then the mana regen from spirit is laughable.

I'm leveling a priest myself, and was just where you are now, so some practical advice.

Forget the insta-DoTs. Especially with heirloom gear you do massive dmg while leveling, and as you said, they're very mana heavy. I realize it seems counter-intuitive to the spec, but you're looking to conserve mana and move fast. Someone mentioned Dispersion for mana. Which would be awesome ... if you didn't have to wait 'til lvl 69 to get it.

Since you're not using SW:Pain much, ignore Imp SW:P in first tier of Shadow tree.
Again, not much Dev Plague, skip Improved DP in 2nd tier, max rest.
Skip Phantasm in 3rd tier (tho obviously very clutch for PvP), max rest.
Fill up all talents in 4th tier.
2/2 Pain and Suffering, Vamp Touch and I like 1 pt in Paralysis for mobs, but personal preference there.
(For lvl 59, Psychic Horror is nice, since if you pull multiple mobs or get overwhelmed in dungeon, you could already Silence casters, but now you can also Disarm that elite berserking mob that's burying his polearm in you or your healer.)

Having Pain and Suffering (take little dmg yourself from SW: D) along with Masochism means if you want, you can insert SW: Death into the beginning of the rotation, say after casting Vampiric Touch, so that you get an instant mana bump, then Refreshment 1% then Spirit Tap 12% (assuming mobs lives long enough for SW: D CD).

Boss!

This gives you the ideal 'mana battery' feel that used to so define the class. You'll be topped up constantly, often mana flowing while you start on next mob. Don't be scared to munch a Blackened Sporefish http://www.wowhead.com/item=27663 if you can get hold of some.

VT -> SWP -> MB -> MF -> MF -> MB -> SWD. Should not take you much mana at all. Unless you are undergeared you shouldnot need the self healing from either DP or PWS which are both expensive to cast. This rotation will keep up replenishment until you reach the next mob most likely as well.